‘Transport chiefs are have unveiled proposals to turn the M4 and M5 into nearly 30 miles of Smart Motorways despite mounting fears over the safety of the road network.
Planners want to convert eight miles of the M4 between Bristol and Bath along with 20 miles of the M5, between Cribbs Causeway and Weston Super Mare.
The new Smart Motorway scheme has been put forward in a plan by the West of England Combined Authority, in order to ‘actively manage the flow of traffic’ on that section of the road.
The authority, made up of three of the councils in the region – Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire, published the proposals in a report setting out a list of projects for completion over the next two decades.
It would see the section of road between junction 19 and junction 18 on the M4 and between junction 17 and the new junction 21a on the M5 being turned into a Smart Motorway, Bristol Live reports.
But is comes just days after the network was branded a ‘death trap’ by MPs and significant safety concerns were raised when a BBC Panorama investigation found 38 people had been killed on them in the last five years.’
